The “Tea Party” political movement that is rousing conservative populists, or populist conservatives, or vegetarian libertarians, has its dim historic roots up the road in Massachusetts.
The epicenter, of course, was colonial Boston, when heroes dressed as Mohawk Indians sneaked aboard ships and dumped lots of British tea into the harbor.
The tea was going to be taxed in a fashion similar to Cadillac health insurance plans — and the Brits had hand-picked several East India Trading Company middlemen to sell the stuff. It was an unfair, anti-consumer kind of an arrangement — sort of like how liquor is sold in Connecticut today.
Connecticut is actually a bit envious of Massachusetts and its rebellious nature. Massachusetts has always been a bubbling, fiery caldron of revolutionary spirit. The rebellion that most closely matches what is going on today among the “tea party” set wasn’t the Boston tea-bag toss of 1783, but Shays’ Rebellion in 1786 and 1787, right off I-91 in Springfield.
The farmers of western Massachusetts, trapped in what might well be called a recession, demanded that politicians cut taxes, declare a moratorium on farm foreclosures, and issue paper money, even though the Federal Reserve hadn’t yet plugged in its printing presses.
The Springfield farmers were frustrated. Their farm mortgages had been packaged and shipped to a securities trader in London, who resold them to investment banks at a price tied to the British tea futures market.
Led by Daniel Shays, the farmers invaded Springfield, once rush hour was over on I-91; occupied the county courthouse; and threatened to transform the Basketball Hall of Fame into a farmers’ market.
The rebels were vanquished and chased out of town, eventually arrested — and sentenced either to death. The 14 rebel leaders, known informally as the Republican National Committee, were eventually pardoned.
Much like the tea party rebels of today, the Shays’ Rebellion crowd had a significant impact. Shays and his gang stunned the American political leadership into realizing that not only were the natives restless, but also that the creaky, new Articles of Confederation-style governing apparatus was insufficient for the task at hand.
Even the low-key George Washington confessed that the Shays incident and the paper-money craze had prompted him to agitate for a larger, more sophisticated federal apparatus.
While the Shays rebels did march for lower taxes, in a “conservative” kind of way, their major accomplishment was prodding the elite into forming a stronger, larger federal government — with a printing press.
You can just imagine a Sarah Palin type, helping to train the Shays’ Rebellion troops on how to load their muskets — and then being horrified by the ensuing strong federal government, capable of assigning her to a death panel not of her own choosing.
Thomas Jefferson reflected the ambiguity that many felt about the mixed blessing that was Shays’ Rebellion. In a letter to James Madison in 1787, Jefferson suggested that the “late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done….No country should be so long without one.”
The latest Massachusetts rebellion, of course, was the election of U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, who sort of wants Congress to cut taxes and do something about public and private debt, without the bother of having to storm the gates of Springfield.
The next Massachusetts insurrection will involve the attempted referendum repeal of the state’s “affordable housing” law. The rebels insist that if you want to sit around in your chaise lounge, in your own house, then you have to be able to afford the market-rate price for the house. This will be dubbed, “Chaise Rebellion.”
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
